The reason is, indeed, not far to seek. The stories are not ordinary ones. It is not on sharpness of repartee, or on striking incidents, that their charm depends. These they have sometimes. But their attraction lies rather in a unique mixture of subtle humor, cunning make-belief, and earnestness; in the piquancy of the contrast between the humorous incongruities and impossibilities of the details, and the real serious earnestness, never absent but always latent, of the ethical tone. They never raise a boisterous laugh: only a quiet smile of delighted appreciation; and they leave a pleasant aroma behind them. To the child-mind the impossibilities are no impossibilities at all, they are merely delightful. And these quaint old-world stories will continue to appeal to children, young and old, as they have done, the world over, through the long centuries of the past. T. W. RHYS DAVIDS. EDITOR’S PREFACE These stories of the Buddha-Rebirths are not for one age or for one country, but for all time, and for the whole world. Their philosophy might be incorporated into the tenets of faith of a League of Nations without destroying any national forms of religious teaching. On the other hand those who prefer the foundation of more orthodox views will be astonished to find their ethics are identical with many of those inculcated in the stories: here we find condemnation of hypocrisy, cruelty, selfishness, and vice of every kind and a constant appeal to Love, Pity, Honesty, loftiness of purpose and breadth of vision. And should we reject such teachings because they were given to the World more than 2,000 years ago? Since it is wise to take into consideration the claims and interests of the passing hour it is well to re-introduce these stories at a moment when, perhaps more than ever before, East and West are struggling to arrive at a clearer understanding of one another. In Tagore’s essay on the relation of the Individual to the Universe, he says: “In the West the prevalent feeling is that Nature belongs exclusively to inanimate things and to beasts; that there is a sudden unaccountable break where human nature begins. According to it, everything that is low in the scale of beings is merely nature, and whatever has the stamp of perfection on it, intellectual or moral, is human nature. It is like dividing the bud and the blossom into two separate categories and putting their grace to the credit of two different and antithetical principles. But the Indian mind never has any hesitation in acknowledging its kinship with nature, its unbroken relation with all.”